Defining the Settings of a Classification or Regression Predictive Model

Before you train your classification or regression predictive model, you need to specify how you want your predictive model to be trained through the Settings panel.

The following sections mirror the sections of the Settings pane you need to complete to create your predictive model.

General

Settings Action Additional Information
Description Enter what your predictive model is trying to do. For example, predict if a customer will churn or not.
Training Data Source Browse and select the data source that contains your historical data. The data source can be an acquired dataset or a live dataset.
Edit Column Details Check and update if necessary the columns contained in your data source. You might need to check the statistical type if you cannot select it as your target at next step.

Predictive Goal

Settings Action Additional Information
Target Select the column from your data source that contains the information you want to get predictions for. For a classification predictive model, the target column must contain binary values only (for example: yes or no).

For a regression predictive model, the target column must contain numerical values.

Influencers

Settings Action Additional Information
Exclude as influencer Select the influencers that should not be taken into consideration by the predictive model.

All of the influencers contained in your training data source can inflluence more or less the target.

Some influencers might have too much influence on the target and should therefore be excluded from the predictive model.

Limit Number of Influencers  

During the training, Smart Predict chooses an optimized number of influencers to include in your predictive model. This is why the option Limit Number Of Influencer is unchecked by default.

However, if you have a reason for overriding the Smart Predict default setup, for example if you want to focus only on a few influencers that have the most influence on the target, switch on the button, and set the Maximum Number of Influencers to be kept in the model.

Example
Imagine that you want to launch a phone survey. You decide to limit the survey up to 3 questions. In this case, as you need to focus on the questions that best influence the prediction, you check the option Limit Number Of Influencers and set Maximum Number of Influencers to 3

Click Train button. Thanks to the generated reports, you can analyze the predictive model performance and decide if you need to further refine your predictive model or if you can use it with confidence. For more information, see Looking for the Best Predictive Model.